Mexican Movies
By Sandra Cisneros
It’s the one with Pedro Armendariz in love with his boss’ wife, only she’s nothing but trouble and his problem is he’s just plain dumb. I like it when the man starts undressing the lady because that’s when Poppa gives us the quarters and sends us to the lobby, hurry, until they put their clothes back on.
In the lobby there are thick carpets, red red, which if you drag your feet will make electricity. And velvet curtains with yellow fringe like a general’s shoulders. And a fat velvet rope across the stairs that means you can’t go up there.
You can put a quarter in a machine in the ladies’ bathroom and get a plastic tic-tac-toe or pink lipstick the color of sugar roses on birthday cakes. Or you can go out and spend it at the candy counter for a bag of churros, or a ham-and-cheese torta, or a box of jujubes. If you buy the jujubes, save the box, because when you’re finished you can blow through it and it sounds just like a burro, which is fun to do when the movie’s on because maybe somebody will answer you with his jujube box until Papa says quit it.
I like the Pedro Infante movies best. He always sings riding a horse and wears a big sombrero and never tears the dresses off the ladies, and the ladies throw flowers from a balcony, and usually somebody dies, but not Pedro Infante because he has to sing the happy song at the end.
Because Kiki’s still little, he likes to run up and down the aisles. Up and down with the other kids, like little horses, the way I used to, but now it’s my job to make sure he doesn’t pick up the candy he finds on the floor and put it in his mouth.
Sometimes somebody’s kid climbs up on the stage, and there at the bottom of the screen’s a double silhouette, which makes everyone laugh. And sooner or later a baby starts crying so somebody else can yell, Que saquen a ese nino! But if it’s Kiki, that means me because Papa doesn’t move when he’s watching a movie and Mama sits with her legs bunched beneath her like an accordion because she’s afraid of rats.
Theaters smell like popcorn. We get to buy a box with a clown tossing some up in the air and catching it in his mouth with little bubbles saying NUTRITIOUS and DELICIOUS. Me and Kiki like tossing popcorn up in the air too and laughing when it misses and hits us on the head, or grabbing big bunches in our hands and squashing it into a tiny crumpled pile that fits inside our mouth, and listening to how it squeaks against our teeth and biting the kernels at the end and spitting them out at each other like watermelon wars.
We like Mexican movies. Even if it’s one with too much talking. We just roll ourselves up like a donut and sleep, the armrest hard against our head until Mama puts her sweater there. But then the movie ends. The lights go on. Somebody picks us up—our shoes and legs heavy and dangling like dead people—carries us in the cold to the car that smells like ashtrays. Black and white, black and white lights behind our closed eyelids, until by now we’re awake but it’s nice to go on pretending with our eyes shut because here’s the best part. Mama and Papa lift us out of the back seat and carry us upstairs to the third-floor front where we live, take off our shoes and clothes, and cover us, so when we wake up, it’s Sunday already and we’re in our beds and happy.